Ukrainian servicemen ride atop an armoured personnel carrier (APC) as they patrol an area near Donetsk August 11, 2014.
REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
There was growing concern over the Ukraine crisis on Friday night after Kiev claimed to have destroyed parts of a column of Russian military vehicles, with Nato accusing Moscow of launching an "incursion".

Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, told David Cameron, the Prime Minister, that government artillery had destroyed a "considerable part" of a small military convoy that entered the country. The Telegraph witnessed a convoy of Russian armoured vehicles and military trucks crossing the border on Thursday night, but it was not clear whether it was the same convoy Ukraine claimed to have attacked.

Russia's government denied its forces had crossed into Ukraine, calling the Ukrainian report "some kind of fantasy".

David Cameron expressed "grave concerns" about the Russian operation in a telephone call with Mr Poroshenko, Ukraine's president.

Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said he was "very alarmed" to hear that Russian armoured vehicles had struck into Ukraine, describing the situation as "potentially very dangerous".

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In London, Alexander Yakovenko, Russia's ambassador to the UK, was summoned to the Foreign Office to clarify reports of the breach.

A Government spokesman on Friday night told The Daily Telegraph that Britain "fully respects the right of Ukraine to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity", stating that "the onus lies with Russia to stop the flow of military supplies across the border, stop arming separatists, and to desist from any action that escalates the crisis further. Instead, the Russians must engage with the international community and the Ukrainian government and make every effort to find a political solution to the crisis."

Fears that the border clash could spill into all-out war between Kiev and Moscow sent major share markets tumbling across Europe and the United States.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato chief, said it was "a Russian incursion" that confirmed long-held suspicions of "a continuous flow of weapons and fighters from Russia into eastern Ukraine", where pro-Russian rebels are fighting government troops.

The Telegraph correspondent was one of two journalists to witness at least 23 armoured personnel carriers and military trucks crossing from Russia into Ukraine near the Donetsk checkpoint north of Rostov-on-Don on Thursday evening. More military vehicles approached the border on Friday.

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Speaking at a European Union foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, Mr Hammond said: "I'm very alarmed by reports that Russian military vehicles may have crossed the border this morning. If there are any Russian military personnel or vehicles in eastern Ukraine, they need to be withdrawn immediately or the consequences could be very serious."

The sharp international response marked a new escalation in Ukraine's bloody four-month long conflict.

The White House announced on Friday that Barack Obama, the US president, will travel to Estonia next month to discuss "collective defence" with the Baltic states, as the US seeks to assert its commitment to defending nervous Nato allies in the former Soviet Union.

"In light of recent developments in Ukraine, the United States has taken steps to reassure allies in Central and Eastern Europe, and this trip is a chance to reaffirm our ironclad commitment to Article V as the foundation of Nato," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.

The Nato treaty considers an attack against one Nato ally as an attack against all, meaning all members must act to defend each other.

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Estonia has a significant Russian population, and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has promised to protect the rights of Russians abroad. Alleged mistreatment of Russians in Crimea was used as a pretext for Russia annexing the Ukrainian peninsula in March.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, is expected to meet his counterparts from Ukraine, France and Germany for talks in Berlin on Sunday, according to the Kremlin.

Arrangements for the talks were discussed at a meeting between Sergei Ivanov, Mr Putin's chief of staff, and Boris Lozhkin, the head of Mr Poroshenko's administration, at a meeting in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday.

Russia has consistently denied supporting rebels of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics" in eastern Ukraine, who launched an armed bid for autonomy in April.

Moscow said on Friday that the military vehicles the Telegraph witnessed at Ukraine's border were probably a "mobile group" of border guards who respond to reports of Ukrainian shelling near the frontier but never leave Russian territory.

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The Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor agency to the KGB which has responsibility for guarding Russia's borders, said that the column the Telegraph saw may have been a patrol to protect local civilians from fighting spilling across the border.

"Due to regular shelling of the Russian territory from Ukraine and cases of mass crossing of the border by Ukrainian servicemen necessary measures are being taken to ensure security of residents in border areas," an FSB official told Russian news agencies. The official said that the patrols only operate on Russian territory.

However, Ukraine's military said it had noted and attacked the Russian armoured convoy after it crossed on to its soil and moved towards the town of Molodohvardiysk, "and part of it no longer exists".

Nato and Mr Poroshenko's government in Kiev have accused Russia for months of sending troops and equipment into Ukraine via a rebel-controlled section of the border, but this was the first eyewitness account of it happening by international media.

Scrutiny was focused on the border area this week because Russia sent a convoy of 270 trucks there with what they stated was humanitarian aid destined for civilians caught in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.

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The trucks, dispatched from Moscow region, rumbled to a halt about 20 miles short of the border with Ukraine on Thursday and have been standing there since.

Moscow and Kiev are wrangling over the terms of the convoy's entry on to Ukrainian soil. Russia says it wants to help the population of eastern Ukraine, where many people are ethnic Russians, and where civilians have got caught in the crossfire between government forces and separatists.

Luhansk, the city which the convoy is aimed at first, is the scene of some of the fiercest battles and has been without running water, electricity or telephone coverage for several weeks.

On Friday, Russia's foreign ministry claimed it had information that Ukraine's Aidar battalion, a government-endorsed unit of paramilitaries, was planning to mine the convoy's route to Luhansk. The idea, the ministry said, was to "destroy the vehicles with humanitarian cargo and the people escorting them and then accuse the [pro-Russian] militia of terrorist activity".

Ukraine, in turn, is deeply suspicious of the convoy, believing it could be a covert invasion force, or at least an attempt to freeze the conflict at a moment when Ukrainian forces are advancing on rebel positions.

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A tentative earlier agreement for the convoy to cross into northeast Ukraine via a Ukrainian-controlled section of the border near Kharkiv fell apart amid bitter recriminations between the two sides.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has offered to facilitate a handover of the cargo, said talks over the fate of the aid could take a week or more. In a small sign of compromise, Ukrainian border guards and customs officials prepared to inspect the cargo.

Russia claimed that key agreements were already in place for handover of the cargo - which includes food, medicines, bedding, generators and water - but they were being undermined by hawks in the Ukrainian military.

A military build-up on the Russian side of the border appeared to continue, with a large convoy of armoured personnel carriers and military lorries seen moving towards the checkpoint at Donetsk, not to be confused with the rebel-held city of the same name in eastern Ukraine.

Dozens of military trucks and armoured personnel carriers, many flying Russian flags and emblazoned with MS - the Russian initials denoting a peacekeeping unit - turned off the M4 motorway towards the Donetsk crossing.